


Cough Syrup

by myshonok



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Cancer, Hospitalization, M/M, Needles, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myshonok/pseuds/myshonok
Summary: "You sure sound casual for someone who hasn't watched the greatest scary movie of all time.""I already know the big twist, though.""That doesn't matter! It's the small detailsthroughoutthe story that give the end such a huge impact. If you don't appreciate those, the importance of the finale is lost. Stop disrespecting M. Night Shyamalan in front of me."





	Cough Syrup

**Author's Note:**

> after 8 months of silence ... i make my grand return ... with a fic that you have already read ...
> 
> this is the rewritten version of my [fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679480) from last year. it's the same story with the same ending BUT hopefully ... improved??? i've poured my whole heart into this and put so much intent into every word,,. please tell me if you think it's better or if you think i need to Stop.
> 
> this fic is completely dedicated to [sawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaslight/pseuds/traceleft), who commented on the old fic, encouraged me to finish the rewrite, n even read through it for me. you guys!!! please read their fic if you'd like to owe your whole life to them or if you're just craving more heartbreak in this chilis tonight. ALSO thank you to everyone on twit who read through it for me as well.
> 
> the title is from [young the giant's song of the same name.](https://youtu.be/8LFWYsUtfV0) please check out the lyrics.

 

 

 

 

Reflecting back on it in the future, Vernon will remember more of what Seungkwan and Minghao looked like the first time he met them – how they interacted and what they said to each other – as opposed to remembering what they said to him or the other way around.

He was surprised the first time Minghao spoke to him, just a simple, “Hey, come in,” because his appearance and his piercings gave Vernon the impression that he’d have a much lower and less gentle voice. He’ll feel guilty about it later – he’s had plenty of experience with strangers judging him by his cover, and there’s no use assuming that Minghao would be mean based on the glare-like slant to his eyes.

Vernon recognizes Seungkwan in the patient’s chair by his chubby cheeks before anything else, registering next his eyes and his smile and the mole above his lip. His hair was longer back then, long enough to go beyond his ears and curl around them. Professionalism took precedence over anything else he may have wanted to say.

He smiles to both of them, taking a seat in the chair beside Seungkwan's. Minghao does the same thing on the opposite side, and Vernon shakes their hands one at a time.

"You must be Boo Seungkwan?"

"That's me," Seungkwan said, raising his hand (he had nice hands) first, then using it to gesture to his friend. "This is Xu Minghao, resident best friend and designated driver."

"Well, I'm Vernon," His smile stretches more when the now-named Minghao gives him a polite nod. "I'm your primary nurse for the next twelve sessions of chemo. So," He held up his hand, fingers spread, and ticked off:

"You've had your echocardiogram."

Seungkwan gave a hearty nod, and one finger was down.

"You've done your pulmonary function test."

"Yes."

"You did your two weeks of blood testing."

"All done."

"Cool." He claps his hands together, watching Seungkwan's smile get a little brighter. Vernon always liked patients who were a little less _this is the end of the world_ and a little more _I’ve done this before, I’ll do it again no problem_. "This is your first relapse, you were in complete remission before, right? Total NED?"

"Just partial. I stopped treatments for a few years, but when they tested to see if it was NED..." He trails off, raises his eyebrows, and makes a grand gesture to the hospital room as a whole.

"I'm sorry."

Seungkwan shrugs. He looks at Minghao, and the quiet atmosphere lasts just long enough to be awkward until he says, "I can do it again."

Feeling relieved, Vernon brings back his smile, slapping his hand on his own clipboard. "I think so too! Did they already give you Lidocaine?"

"All numbed up, Vernon-ssi."

Vernon stands up to turn on the TV on for the both of them - the infusions take a long time and a lot of patience, which can get stupidly boring even for the person receiving treatment. His smile holds while he listens to Seungkwan and Minghao bicker over what they want to watch (ultimately, the decision was for an _Insam Gongsa_ volleyball match after Seungkwan pulled out his "I'm dying, so we do what I want" card), but it fades into concentration once he actually starts the treatment.

First, Vernon has to insert the primary large needle that all of Seungkwan's medication will go through - this is done through a port underneath his skin, which he had inserted surgically back during his first diagnosis years before, never removed in the event of relapse. (Vernon asks Seungkwan if his port is in his arm or his chest, and laughs when Seungkwan flutters his eyelashes and jokingly says, "You want me to take off my shirt, huh?") After that, he starts with Benadryl, steroids, relaxers, all meant to make it easier on Seungkwan.

Seungkwan complains halfheartedly about being able to taste the saline of his medicine on his tongue, so Minghao pulls over some of the magazines sitting in a stack on the side table and they spend some time smelling each of the little perfume samples inside of them. At one point, Seungkwan holds a page up for Vernon. He thinks it's awful and not flattering or fitting of the name _Breath of Lilies_ at all, but it's probably loads better than the metal-like taste of medicine meant to stop allergic reactions.

After the initial drugs for preparation comes the actual chemotherapy itself, which makes Seungkwan squirm repeatedly because, as he describes, "It's as if someone is pouring a glass of cold water down my ribcage.”

After all of the medicine has been injected, Vernon asks, "Are you doing cold caps?"

Seungkwan shakes his head. "Not this time," and Minghao, who had become a bit more comfortable around Vernon in their hour or so together (he likes to think), asks, "What are cold caps?"

"If you don't want to lose your hair as quickly, you can wear these...helmet kind of things? They're cold like ice and really uncomfortable," Seungkwan explains. "I did it last round because I was so self-conscious about losing my hair, but it was way too many hours to make it worth it."

Seungkwan picks at the ratty blanket he brought with him, eyes turned downward. "It's just that, once you lose it anyway, you kind of realize how unimportant stuff like that is, you know? Everything you used to be self-conscious about doesn’t matter anymore."

 

Vernon leaves after telling Seungkwan that he'll be meeting with both him and his doctor again later in the day, but is stopped right outside the door by Minghao grabbing onto the sleeve of his scrubs and apologizing right after, lest he be impolite.

Minghao makes sure the door clicks behind him, then turns to Vernon with a grim expression. Vernon finds himself intimidated again just based off of how intense Minghao's eye contact is, despite knowing him better at that point.

"I have a question. About Seungkwan."

"Shoot."

"Whenever we're going home, he falls asleep in the car and has no energy to do anything for the rest of the day." When he's talking about Seungkwan, Minghao's whole demeanor changes. "Is that normal?"

"Yeah, totally," Vernon says. "We give him a lot of numbing and pain medication, so it's expected for him to be drowsy for a few hours after. You shouldn't have to worry."

Seungkwan meets with Vernon again the same day, this time with his doctor Chwe Seungcheol there too. He talks about how much energy he has, how he always goes on walks with someone named Seokmin in the mornings and rarely throws up before or after. Seungcheol tells Seungkwan that his bloodcounts are looking very positive and that he shouldn't be neutropenic again as long as the good results continue. Seungkwan leaves with a big smile and hugs both of them before he goes. Vernon doesn’t remember much other than the feeling of Seungkwan hugging him for the first time and the happy, positive look on Seungcheol’s face.

 

One week later, on the following Sunday, Vernon finds Seungkwan alone. He's writing in a journal when he comes in but shuts it before Vernon can see anything written there.

Their conversation doesn’t move beyond small talk until after Seungkwan's Lidocaine has been applied. They have to wait an hour for his skin to be completely numbed, so Seungkwan asks if Vernon will walk with him outside. When Vernon asks why, Seungkwan says, "Because I still can."

"Can I talk to you about something?" Seungkwan asks once they made it out into the courtyard garden of the hospital. The space isn't particularly large, and there's only one main path that they can walk on, so their only option is go in circles and look at the same bunches of flowers on repeat. Seungkwan looks happy just to have some fresh air, and that kind of appreciation makes Vernon feel guilty for being bored with the repetition.

"Go ahead," Vernon says. After catching his elbow to keep him from tripping twice, Vernon makes Seungkwan sit down on a bench. Seungkwan pouts, but doesn’t say anything.

"It's not that I don't trust Seokmin or Minghao with this, it's just that," He makes some vague motions with his hands. "They would just feel guilty? So I'm going to complain to you instead."

Vernon puts his arm over the back of the bench behind Seungkwan, giving him his total attention. "Sounds good to me."

"Okay. So...when you have cancer...your life is kind of put on hold, right?"

"Right."

"All of the things that you wanted to do in your life you have to stop because every week you get treatment and for half of the rest of the week after that you wanna throw up all the time. You can't go to school or work - which, I guess to other people, that's a relieving thing? But it's not to me. It’s boring. I see the same couple of people every day and... I feel like I'm not learning anything new because reading books gives me headaches." His head snaps over as he maintains intense eye contact with Vernon and rushes, “Not that I don’t _love_ who I see every day, but I’m used to just being able to go into the city and meet someone new at a coffee shop, or something romantic like that.”

Vernon doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything at all, instead focusing on how Seungkwan likes to wave his hands around when he talks.

"I feel like all of my friends are moving on way ahead of me. Or without me. When I went into partial remission, I really thought that I would be able to catch up and like, go to auditions and start college and everything, but I got that second diagnosis and had to tell my school I couldn't come in the fall while Seokmin and Minghao could. Even my sister graduated and got married and I..."

He stops there, head turning sharply to Vernon. "Is this too much?"

"Not at all."

So he continues. "I had this friend in school, Chan. He was really cool and nice and we had a lot of like... those arguments that are fun, not serious? He was a year younger than me, though, and I think when I got my first diagnosis it... scared him? He didn't talk to me normally anymore. It was like Chan thought I had turned into someone made of glass and he was Thing from _Fantastic Four_."

Vernon laughs, making Seungkwan's eyes go wide.

"I'm being serious! It was heartbreaking!"

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm sure he still wants to be friends, but handling the idea that your friend might die sooner than everyone else is kind of a lot."

Seungkwan huffs out a snort, one side of his mouth lifting up. "I appreciate you being blunt about it, at least. I feel like the only way I got through last time was Minghao making jokes like that."

Vernon laughs again. They were both quiet after that - Vernon was watching a group of people across the courtyard, and Seungkwan was lost in thought.

"My mom quit her job for me, you know," He says, eventually. "She had just started up a new position, too, but she quit while I was still in Jeju to help take care of me and get me to the hospital every week. My dad had to work more, so I didn't see him for a really long time. Now I'm in Seoul for better treatment and he's paying for my apartment."

Vernon stops watching the people in the garden to look at Seungkwan instead. He asks, “You wanna go back inside?” And helps Seungkwan back up when he nods.

Once back in Seungkwan’s room, Vernon starts the usual steps for treatment. “What’s your journal for?”

Seungkwan waits for Vernon's hand to be off of his sternum to respond. "I was talking to my sister after I got the second diagnosis about how I thought I was too negative that first time around. I had cancer, so it's expected that I'd be sad, right? But I was _really_ sad, all the time, and I wanted to have this round be better for me because I kinda stopped appreciating the small things before. I want to keep record of everything.”

Vernon hesitated, distracted by giving Seungkwan his medicine. "Small things?"

"I've got a system! Stuff like… whenever I can get out of the house and run an errand, or whenever I don't throw up right when I wake up, it's a good day and I can put a sticker on the date. That way I'm staying positive and optimistic.”

“So that you can look back on it when you’re older?”

“Or so I can give it to someone.”

Vernon looks up from where he had been leaned over the syringe, spotting the stickers tucked into the back of Seungkwan’s journal. "What about today? Is today a gold star day?"

Vernon's half smile is matched by Seungkwan's full one. "Oh, definitely."

 

Seungkwan isn't alone for his next Sunday treatment. He's brought along his good friend Jeonghan, and Vernon can tell he’s interrupted a deep conversation as soon as he knocks on the door.

"Vernonie, welcome to work," Seungkwan greets with a smile, which he reciprocates.

"This is Jeonghan," Seungkwan says, as grandly as he can, leaning over the side of his bed (he'd been starting to use the bed more often than the chair) to rope his arm around Jeonghan's shoulders and pull him in close. "You know about the one online page for finding someone who had the same symptoms as you, right?”

Vernon shakes hands with Jeonghan, then takes a seat. "I've heard about it."

"Well, he messaged me. Turns out he had the same location _and_ severity as me, with recurrence and everything, and he's lived for five years in complete remission."

"Hey, congratulations," Vernon says, both the tone of his voice and his smile genuine. "Your hair looks healthy."

"Thank you."

Vernon doesn't pay complete attention to their conversation, looking at Seungkwan's updated blood count charts instead. He tries not to appear too outwardly bothered.

They go quiet when someone knocks at the door. Jeonghan is the first to stand and open it, and they're met with Joshua Hong on the other side, dressed in a suit that fits him far too well.

Jeonghan says, "Hi, Jisoo, how was church," at the same time that Vernon says, "Yo, what are you doing here, man?"

"Vernon!" Joshua slaps Vernon's back and grins, gesturing to Jeonghan. "Just picking this guy up."

Vernon pauses, takes the moment to look at Joshua's hand and Jeonghan's hand, then blinks at him. His thoughts are cut off by Seungkwan exclaiming, "Wait, is this your husband? The one you said was tall and handsome?" He leans forward with his hands on the bedspread, like he’s trying involve himself in the their little reunion after being left out of it. "How do you know Vernon?"

"He shadowed here before he became a real doctor," Vernon explains. "We used to get lunch together all the time before he transferred."

Joshua shakes hands with Seungkwan, then smiles at Vernon. "It's good to see you again. Small world, man."

Joshua and Jeonghan sit and talk with the both of them while Vernon gives Seungkwan his medicine. Seungkwan fits in easily, and about this time Vernon realizes that he was the type of person that could be comfortable talking to anyone, someone that could make that person be comfortable talking to him, too.

"Hey, I gotta take this to the lab," Vernon finally admits long after he's given Seungkwan his chemo and watched him start to lose energy. "Josh, you wanna come with me? You can say hi to Jihoon and the others over there."

"Yeah, Josh," Jeonghan cooed. "Go see your old friends."

"Congrats on your marriage, for real," Vernon says as soon as they're in the hallway and heading to the opposite side of the building. "I remember you talking about him near the end of your shadowing, but...wasn't he your patient?"

"He was Seungcheol's patient," Joshua says, giving a wry look.

"Did you guys date before he was in remission?"

"Actually," Joshua's voice changes tone to something more wistful. "I wanted to, but Jeonghan didn't want to get together until after he was sure the remission was complete. He said he didn't want me to have to go through the hurt if he died. Which was kinda dumb, considering I already liked him a lot."

Vernon glances to the side, finding himself more nervous than he had ever been while talking to someone as laid back as Joshua Hong. "But weren't you worried about that? About him - him dying?"

"We had a long talk about it once we started dating officially. I told him that I wanted to live in the moment and enjoy being happy with him while I still could." Vernon remembers that, specifically – the idea of _living in the moment_.

"Anyway," Joshua opens the door leading to the medical lab, and his smile while holding it open shocks Vernon back into paying attention. "It worked out pretty well for us. Where's Jihoon?"

So Vernon stops thinking about it for a while, and lets himself get distracted with something else instead.

 

On Wednesday, Seungkwan has such a violent reaction to his medicine that Seokmin drives him into the emergency room at eleven at night. Vernon is paged to come in not four hours after he was off.

Vernon talks with Seungcheol about what they have to do right outside of Seungkwan's door for ten, twenty, thirty minutes or longer. Seungkwan stays curled up on his side in his bed, staring blankly as Seokmin massages his aching hands and wrists and hums softly to him.

The same couple of words cycle on repeat in Seungkwan's mind, banging around the sides of his head and making it ache. _Lidocaine, benadryl, hydrocortisone, demaxethasone, methylprednisolone, prednisolone._

 

They have Seungkwan in priority care until Friday morning. Vernon was off work Thursday morning but not in the evening, and as soon as he clocks back in to check on Seungkwan, Seokmin goes home for what was probably the first time since they came in on Wednesday, saying something about _trusting him in your care_.

He's back in for his regularly scheduled chemo on the Sunday after that. Vernon finds himself surprised the second he knocks on the door and enters, because Seungkwan's hair had finally fallen out - it was right on time if not a bit late at four weeks into his treatment.

The surprising part was the little moles and freckles on the skin of Seungkwan's head that caught Vernon off guard. They were endearing, and matched the patterns Vernon had already found over his chest and shoulders.

The atmosphere is stifled and awkward due to the leftover urgency still lingering from the past couple of days. There's about an hour of time between Seungkwan's Lidocaine being applied and his medicine being infused, and Vernon dreads the silence so much that he makes himself make small talk.

Coincidentally, he speaks out at the same time that Seungkwan does.

"What did you do for the rest of the weekend?"

"Can we go outside?"

They were both shocked into quiet, and tried _again_ ,

"What?"

"Do you want to?"

They stop again. Seungkwan bursts into laughter, and Vernon joins him. He thinks it was just like a scene from a movie he’d seen once.

"Sorry. I want to go outside."

"It's pretty cold out there," Vernon says, rising to his feet and toward the door. "I'll go grab you a wheelchair."

"What? No!" Seungkwan protests, fumbling for the buttons on the side of his bed in an attempt to sit it up so he could get down. "I don't need a wheelchair."

"Yeah, you do." Vernon stops with one hand on the doorframe, the other on his hip, looking unimpressed without intending to. "You were in one when you got here this morning."

"I was also _asleep_ when I got here this morning, Chwe Vernon," Seungkwan argues back, clambering to his feet and into some hospital regulation slippers that made him look at least ten percent more like a grandfather than before. He takes little shuffling steps and gives Vernon a weak elbow on his way out the door. "I have the ability to walk still, don't I? So I'm gonna."

They take their usual route through the hospital other than a small detour when the smell of chemicals and latex makes Seungkwan nauseous. He makes it around the circle one time before he tugs on Vernon's elbow so they could sit down on the bench that had become theirs.

Vernon watches him stall, Seungkwan's mouth opening and closing as he tries to figure out what to say. After a moment, he slaps his palms down on his knees and looks to Vernon seriously.

"Can I complain to you some more?"

"Course you can."

"It's about Seokmin. He's a singer, you know? And he really likes theater. He's been stressing out lately over his auditions for his school, and I want to support him and comfort him, but it kind of upsets me, too."

Vernon waits for him to continue, but when he doesn't, he asks, "Why?"

"Not because I want all of his focus to be on me, or anything awful like that. When I'm all stuck in my own head, I sometimes asks somebody else to talk about what's bothering them just so that I can be distracted? Then when that happens I get sad because I don't...have the option to be worried over small things anymore."

Vernon shifts so his knees are turned toward Seungkwan, arm over the back of the bench like before. "What do you mean?"

"It's," Seungkwan huffs out his exhale, turning his head toward the sky and making quick movements like he’s struggling to grab onto something. "Say I have...one huge pimple, right on my forehead." He forges on through Vernon's laugh.

"If I were a normal - if I didn't have - _if I wasn't in the hospital,_ " he forces out, "I could stress out over having good skin and being thin and making my audition. But since I have cancer, that's all I can let myself worry about. I can't be naive about things like that anymore."

Seungkwan hangs his head between his shoulders, back to fiddling with the hem of his gown. Vernon withdraws his arm from the back of the bench and faces forward.

“I think you’re misunderstanding him.” When Seungkwan looks over, Vernon shrugs one shoulder. “Seokmin, I mean. I don’t know if you know, but he brought you in here alone on Wednesday and didn’t leave until Friday morning. He cares about you a lot.”

He risks a glance over. Seungkwan’s face has flushed, with guilt or embarrassment or flattery or appreciation, Vernon doesn’t know.

“Maybe he’s just telling you all of those things because he thinks you want to hear about them the same way you’d want to hear about them if you were going to school with him. Not because he wants you to think he’s… I don’t know, putting his problems in front of yours when you’re together?” Another glance, but Seungkwan hasn’t moved. “I don’t mean this like an accusation, but that’s kind of selfish in the first place, I think. You should let him know if you’re not liking it, ‘cause he’s probably doing it to make you happy.”

Vernon drops his hands, grinding the bottom of his non-slip regulation shoes into the pavement. “That’s what I think, anyway, but I’m not the one going through all of that, like you. I’m not the one who knows what it’s like, so I’m sorry if it’s mean for me to, like… talk as if I do.”

Seungkwan shakes his head, voice softer than before. “I’m not mad. I just didn’t think about it like that. You’ve got a different perspective on things. Thanks for being honest.”

They go back to Seungkwan’s room. Vernon thinks about something to say the whole way there, and finally comes up with, "What if you didn't?"

That gets Seungkwan to look up, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Huh?"

"I mean - what if you didn't have cancer?"

"What... would I worry about?"

"Yeah."

Seungkwan blinks, excitement coming back into his face. "I would... worry about auditions, like Seokmin."

Vernon nods, urging him to continue.

"We'd bicker over who could have what part, probably, and if we fought I'd worry about _that_. I'd worry about my favorite idols, and what they were up to. Oh!" He looked to Vernon, smiling big this time. "I'd worry about getting famous enough to meet them. Because I'd be famous if I didn't have cancer, right?"

Vernon grinned back without hesitation. "Definitely."

"I'd be worried over making it to all of Minghao's tournaments. Over… whether or not my sister's fiancé is right for her."

Looking up, Vernon nudges his shoulder playfully. "Looks like you have a lot on your plate, Kwannie."

After they're done with chemo infusion, Jeonghan comes to pick Seungkwan up for lunch. Vernon continues the rest of his shift in a good mood, even through elderly patient's catheters and one particularly disgusting case of an ingrown toenail.

When he gets home, he showers and falls asleep watching _Night Goblin_. In his dream is Seungkwan, bleach blonde instead of bald and making jokes on the same show like a natural, respected and well liked just as he was normally. He remembers thinking something along the lines of _maybe he has more of a chance than I’ve been giving him_ , but the dream’s forgotten by the time the sun comes up.

 

Two weeks go by without another emergency. Seungkwan is handling his chemotherapy fine, but _fine_ during treatment is not the same as the _fine_ everyone else feels. Fine means that Seungkwan is always feeling sick, feeling like he's going to throw up, struggling to eat food because the smell takes away his appetite. Fine means that he is just barely starting to have serious trouble moving around, and he's softly asking Seokmin to massage his sore muscles more often than before.

The week after the last time they went for a walk, Seungcheol tells Seungkwan that he'd need to have a feeding tube installed to keep him from losing any more weight. And he _had_ lost a ridiculous amount of weight - when Vernon first met him, his cheeks were chubby and full where they were now gaunt and angular.

He has it installed by the following Sunday when Vernon sees him next. He's visibly unhappy, either because of the tube or his situation or something else, he doesn't know. Vernon smiles at him when he comes in, and feels relieved when Seungkwan smiles back despite his exhaustion.

"How's it goin'?" He asks while numbing the skin around Seungkwan's port. When he doesn't get a response right away, he glances up to make sure his eyes were still open.

"It's going," Seungkwan finally breathes. "I'm just tired. Is it okay if I sleep?"

"Go ahead."

They both stop talking, but the silence isn't uncomfortable like it had been before, and the tension between them is gone completely. Seungkwan has his eyes closed for the first couple of minutes, but gives up and settles on watching _King of Masked Singer_ on his little bedside television. Vernon tells him he likes the contestant, and Seungkwan doesn’t respond.

Around the same time he's ready for chemo, Seungkwan isn't entertained with the show anymore and takes to watching Vernon work instead.

Once the initial infusion is done, Vernon hangs up Seungkwan's medicine bags. At that point he doesn't technically have to be in the room anymore, but he's inclined to stay when Seungkwan takes his hand (thin and long versus calloused and big) and asks,

"Can you talk to me about something?"

Vernon's thumb traces over the top of Seungkwan's knuckles, where the skin is dry enough to crack and flake. Faintly, in the back of his head, he’s reminded of what a Krispy Kreme donut looks like once it’s bitten into, or ice after you stomp on it.

"Do you want me to get you some lotion?"

Seungkwan hums softly. "Sure."

He leaves just long enough to grab him a hotel bathroom sized bottle of moisturizer. Sitting down, Vernon stops with his hands poised in the air, unsure if he should hand Seungkwan the bottle - he couldn't move his fingers very precisely, he might have trouble opening the cap -

"Just put it on your hands and rub mine."

He does what Seungkwan asks, one hand at a time. It's unexpectedly intimate considering they're not even holding hands - it's just Seungkwan's hand sandwiched weirdly between both of Vernon's with some lotion in between. Somehow, that's more impactful. The tension is back.

"Did you hear what I asked you?" Not tension like they dealt with after Seungkwan's emergency, but the tension of words that should have been spoken but weren't. Vernon shakes his head. "If you could talk to me about something."

Misunderstanding what he meant, Vernon asks, "Yeah. What do you want to talk about?"

"No, no, I mean. Can you tell me something about your life right now?"

"I thought you said that made you feel upset."

"Everything makes me feel upset. Will you?"

Vernon switches to the other hand once Seungkwan offers it. "A current issue of mine?"

"Yeah."

Vernon falls silent, eyebrows furrowed from his deep thought and concentration on Seungkwan's hands. He doesn't talk until both hands are considerably softer, at which point he’s holding them properly.

"I like someone," he said. He half expected Seungkwan to gasp or ask _who_ but he's stone still. That’s where it’s different from movies, he thinks.

"He's cute and funny and loves to go outside," Vernon continues. "I've never heard him sing, but his best friend sent me videos once and he's _really_ good. He loves his family more than anyone I've ever met, he's always talking about his mom's cooking. He wants to be an entertainer, and I think it fits perfectly, the way he's always cracking dumb jokes."

He looks up quickly, finds Seungkwan's wide eyes, looks down. It takes clearing his throat to keep going.

"But he's sick. He's been sick for a long time, and he's -" A pause, "- we don't know how well he's doing, just that the threat of him dying is a lot higher than before."

"Vernon -"

"I don't know how much time we would get together, or if he'd want to, but -"

" _Vernon, seriously -_ "

"- but I think we make each other happy, really happy, so -"

Seungkwan lurches over the edge of his bed, using his free hand to pinch Vernon's ear. "Stop ignoring me, this is so uncomfortable.” He bursts out suddenly with what must be frustrated tears and says, “I’m sorry.”

Vernon, embarrassed, reaches over the bed to the nightstand (he wasn't willing to let go of Seungkwan's hand, so the stretch was awkward) and grabs the box of tissues there. Vernon wipes his cheeks and under his nose gently, clear of the tape where tubes were held down. "What are you sorry for?"

Seungkwan leans his cheek into his hand, closing his eyes and speaking through a clogged throat. "I think if I wasn't here, if we - were in some other universe, or something - if we had that chance, it'd be so perfect -"

"I know, but we're here together right now, aren't we?"

“No, it’s not like that. Just because I want to doesn’t mean that we can. I’m sick, Vernon, I can’t date anyone when I’m sick, I already tried and it’s not for me. The threat is too high, and you know that better than anyone else. It’s not because you’re my nurse, it’s just a matter of…” He slaps his hand onto the bedspread, frustrated at not being able to find the words he needs to express himself. “I don’t know how to put this.”

“No, it’s okay. I get what you mean.” Vernon runs a hand through his hair. Looking back, he’d realize how important this particular cringy conversation would end up being to their relationship – for now, he’s swimming in a hot pool of embarrassment. “But you want to date me, right?”

Seungkwan scoffs, dabbing underneath his eyes with a tissue. “Yeah. I don’t know how obvious I’ve made that. Please be assured that if I were healthy, I would have gone to outrageous extent to show you that I liked you. I’m not… I’m not trying to lead you on, or anything like that.”

“Do you want to date someone when you’re in complete remission?” He asks, undeterred by Seungkwan pursing his lips.

In response, Seungkwan holds out his pinky for Vernon’s, and they interlock. Their knuckles and the pads of their thumbs press together. He says, “I promise to take you out on a date when I get my official NED from Dr. Chwe, and only then.”

 

Seungkwan texts Vernon to come over the Saturday before his eighth treatment (only four to go, only four to go) with a pitiful text that said something like _It's not an emergency, I just can't hold a pencil and I need your help,_ which he topped off very romantically with _even though your handwriting is awful, they always talk about doctor's scrawl, but I think that a male nurse's is worse, someone has to spread the word,_ and so on.

Seungkwan’s apartment is small and on the ground floor of his building so he can access it easily. It has one big room, connected to the kitchenette, which holds his futon, TV, and closet. The opposite wall to the door has another door leading to the bathroom. What sets the apartment apart from any other college student’s dorm: the IV pole nearby the futon, a line of prescribed pill bottles for nausea and headaches and soreness next to the lamp on the nightstand.

It’s only rented out for the year.

Vernon had been there once already the week prior when Seungkwan called him after work. It had gone like this:

_“What do you mean, ‘I’ve never seen Sixth Sense?’”_

Vernon laughed. “Uh, exactly that.”

_“You sure sound casual for someone who hasn’t watched the greatest scary movie of all time.”_

Seokmin was there to see _Sixth Sense_ with them. Meeting him outside of work setting was, Vernon found, completely different – they were on a friend-to-friend level inside Seungkwan’s apartment, as opposed to patient’s-friend-and-nurse level, and Seokmin treated him differently for it. They got along like nobody’s business.

Seungkwan didn’t make it through all of the movie, despite it being a thriller (he’d admitted, sheepishly, in the way that people talk when they’re worried that someone won’t approve of something they love, that it was kind of slow if you didn’t know what you were watching for) and ended up falling asleep on Seokmin’s shoulder. At that point exactly – he would have been able to pinpoint it if asked – Vernon came to a sudden realization regarding his feelings for Seungkwan.

He loved with Seungkwan the same way that all of his friends did – not necessarily romantically, but magnetically, as if the force of Seungkwan’s personality drew them all in and made them want to be in his presence. He could be annoying and petty, but it only ever made them more endeared with him instead of irritated. His kindness, his consideration – it drew them all in, and seeing the two of them sitting there with Seungkwan’s mouth hanging open made Vernon realize how, without noticing it, he’d become another part of the interconnected solar system revolving around the sun that was Boo Seungkwan.

(Seungkwan ended up waking up before either of them, smacking his face on the bathroom door in his rush to get to the toilet to vomit. Vernon was barely coherent enough to help, but Seokmin had it covered, holding tissues to Seungkwan’s nose as it bled and making him laugh by naming off gourmet foods like _marinated crab!_ when Seungkwan exclaimed, at the top of his lungs at four in the morning, _I miss food so much!_ )

The day Seungkwan texted him starts out differently from the week before when Seungkwan calls, “Come in,” instead of getting up to open the door. It became evident right away that he wasn’t feeling well, sitting at the edge of his futon amongst messy blankets. His back was hunched over a TV tray, and the strain of the pose must have been miserable. When he looks up, Vernon sees the sweat on Seungkwan’s forehead.

“Hey there, sunshine,” Vernon greets, slipping off his shoes. His immediate instinct is to go over and touch Seungkwan’s brow in a completely nurse-like way and ask, “Can I get you something?”

“We should make a rule where you keep your work behaviors out of my house,” Seungkwan responds, dryly. “Can you bring me a glass of water?”

He puts a straw in the glass and Seungkwan gives him a pouty look for it, but doesn’t resist when Vernon pulls the blankets away from him wipes his forehead with a damp cloth. Once he’s done fretting, Vernon plops down on the futon with his arm over the back of it (it’s familiar, but he can’t place why) and turns toward Seungkwan.

“What are you working on?”

Seungkwan drapes the wet cloth over his head and leaves it there, pushing the TV tray toward Vernon. He scoots closer, so their knees are touching the way they do when they sit on the hospital's courtyard bench together. That’s where the familiarity was coming from.

"I wanna write some letters," He says. "It's kind of morbid, but in the case of me dying -"

Seungkwan looks up, shooting Vernon a warning through his eyelashes not to say anything about that sentence, _in the case of me dying,_ because he knew that he was about to. “I want my friends and family to have letters they can read to help them, um, move on.”

“No one’s going to move on from you,” Vernon says, loud and clear, shutting up when Seungkwan’s toes bump against his ankle like a threat.

They start with the letter for Jeonghan and Joshua. Vernon writes down everything that Seungkwan tells him to – writes that he’s thankful for them being there for Seungkwan and giving him information about his treatment, thankful for Jeonghan’s extremely heartfelt promise that if Seungkwan ever needed a place to stay, he had theirs. Seungkwan talks through and complains about Vernon’s handwriting through most of the letter, until the atmosphere gets too grim and they’re both quiet.

Seungkwan starts crying at the end of Minghao’s letter, something like

_Thank you for giving me all the love you could, Do you remember our hike after my remission announcement, We walked for so long I thought my legs would fall off, But the view at the end was so, so worth it, You and Seokmin would always walk with me even when I fell behind, I’m sorry for fighting with you, I love you more than anyone can imagine, Thank you for giving up so much for me_

and Vernon knows it’ll be even rougher to get through his sister’s and ( _God_ ) his mother’s letters, so he sets down the pen for a second. As hard as it is to write the letters for Seungkwan, it’s harder to listen to him cry.

“Don’t I get a letter too?” Vernon says in a soft, teasing voice, turning his torso toward Seungkwan so he could wipe at the tears collecting underneath his eyes.

Seungkwan sniffs loudly, turning his face away in embarrassment and pressing his nose to his sleeve. “Don’t you think you’re being too greedy?”

“Nah.” Vernon stands to get tissues, struck by a comfortable sense of déjà vu. “You’re writing them for people who mean a lot to you, right? Don’t I mean a lot to you? Be honest.”

His sniff is indignant this time. “What if I said no? What would you do, huh?”

Vernon looks over his shoulder and juts his lower lip out as far as he could. Seungkwan appears unaffected.

“I’ve known them a lot longer, anyway,” Seungkwan mollifies. “And I’m not going to have you write your _own_ letter.”

“Don’t you think you’re just gonna toss these?” Vernon sits back down, checking Seungkwan’s forehead again to stall him picking up the pen again. “You might not need them.”

Silence for a couple of dragging moments. Seungkwan gives Vernon a very stinky side-eye, but his voice stays soft. “You know better than that.”

He shrugs. “I’m just a nurse. Not your oncologist.”

“A nurse who _knows better_ than that.”

They start again and write letters for Seokmin and his sisters and his mom, too, at which point Seungkwan is too much of an exhausted mess to continue talking them out.

Seungkwan pushes away the TV tray and leans into the back of the futon, pulling that same thin blanket around himself despite the still-warm room. Vernon thinks it must be a comfort thing, because _he’s_ sweating. He says, “You can stay longer, if you want to.”

So Vernon does. He makes jokes to take Seungkwan’s mind off the letters and his diagnosis and his life, and he turns on a show for him, and he cooks him dinner when he’s asked to in the sweetest voice Seungkwan can muster.

Just about when he’s on the brink of falling asleep, Seungkwan mumbles out from underneath the blanket he has covering his mouth. “Since we have to meet up for chemo tomorrow morning anyway, do you wanna have a sleepover?” The wording of his request is endearing.

Vernon doesn’t answer right away, and he can tell that it makes Seungkwan nervous. His schedule’s bit hectic and taking away any sleep from Seungkwan seems to be some kind of heresy.

“I’m on call tonight,” He responds, gesturing to his pager sitting on the arm of the futon. “And I have to get to work two hours before your appointment.”

“That’s okay.” Vernon watches a little bump appear and disappear in the fabric where Seungkwan must have shrugged. “It’ll be kind of like we’re waking up together on a normal day. I’ve always wanted to wake up with someone I liked.”

Vernon thinks about what Joshua said, and thinks about the realization he’d come to the week before. He thinks about what he wants. He stays the night on the tiny futon, with Seungkwan.

At six in the morning, Vernon and Seungkwan wake up together. The older one of them is in high spirits immediately, starting as soon as they brush their teeth side-by-side in Seungkwan’s tiny mirror and Seungkwan laughs at the domesticity of it. The good mood doesn’t end even when they get to the hospital. Since they were so early and Vernon had to clock in, he leaves Seungkwan in the children’s cancer ward, which he later describes as being _seriously the best morning ever, even with all the nausea… I could sink the titanic with all of this nausea._

He’s still happy when Vernon sees him at the normal time for treatment, but the atmosphere steadily drops during the course of him receiving medicine (he starts to feel really, really sick, not just the normal everyday sick he had gotten used to). All traces of the joy from that morning are gone by the time they go to talk to Seungcheol, and he tells Seungkwan how his body is doing.

 

“Wake up, Seungkwan.”

On the twentieth day of October, the Friday before Seungkwan’s tenth treatment, it takes three tries to wake him up. The first try, Vernon only calls his name, by the second, he’s resorted to softly shaking his shoulder.

“Come on, wake up. I know you don’t want to. You need to take your medicine. Yeah, I know you don’t want to, I know.”

Seungkwan opens his eyes, and there’s a moment where he adjusts to the light before he turns his gaze onto Vernon and it switches to a soft glare. He tries to place his hand on the futon and push himself up, but fails, and plops back down with a big exhale.

“I think this one tastes better than the last one. It smells like…I dunno, cranberry, or something…”

“Vernon,” He calls, Vernon responding “hm?” from where he has his back turned, preparing Seungkwan’s medicine. He finds himself more and more surprised every time he hears Seungkwan talk these days. His voice was so frail compared to week one.

“I can’t get up, can you –“

“Yeah. Just a second.”

Vernon sets the cup aside and pulls Seungkwan’s wheelchair over to the edge of the futon, then tucks his hands underneath his elbows and knees and lifts him into the chair, Seungkwan’s arm going over his shoulder. He grabs his thin blanket and drapes it over him, and they’re quiet while Seungkwan forces himself to take his medicine, thankfully only coughing for a minute after he does. Vernon guesses, based on his expression, that it doesn’t taste like cranberry or anything else from the citrus family.

“Is it warm enough to go outside?” Seungkwan eventually asks, once he’s had water and recovered. Vernon sees little pinches appear in the blanket where he must be grabbing onto it. If the situation were different, he’d think it was cute.

He gets behind Seungkwan to take him out, but before they’ve made it through the door he says, “Hold on,” and cranes his neck back toward his bed, scanning frantically, then to his desk, where they stop. “Can you grab my journal?”

Vernon wants to ask why, because it isn’t as if Seungkwan will be able to write in it at the point he is now, but he doesn’t, and sets it on his legs instead.

His apartments are too cheap and small to have a nice view of anything, especially on the ground floor where Seungkwan is required to stay, but if they walk far enough they reach a small community park next to the grounds of the apartments. It isn’t at all comparable to the hospital grounds that they’ve become used to sitting at, in terms of beauty, but the grass and sun and the sounds of kids playing make Seungkwan happy enough. He might have said something like, _anything beats staying inside my cramped apartment for any longer._

What he says instead is, “I think you should take this.”

Vernon looks down at the journal Seungkwan holds out for him, and the ground beneath his feet tilts. The one nearly-empty sheet of gold star stickers, poking out from where it’s tucked into the back, reflects sun into Vernon’s eyes and blinds him.

Weakly, he mumbles, “Didn’t you want to read this when you were older?”

It sounds like _are you giving up?_

He doesn’t move the journal when Seungkwan sets it on his lap, despite the urge to shove it back into the arms of its owner. Faintly, he realizes he’s reacting like a child throwing a tantrum.

“I wanted to, but I’m tired, Vernon. There’s no evidence of me surviving at this point, I’m just waiting for Dr. Chwe to give me the official notice --” He looks over, expression apologetic. Vernon can’t make himself meet his eyes directly. “ Don’t argue with me, okay?. If I’m wrong, you can just give it back to me.”

Vernon thinks, offhandedly, that it should be stormy instead, pouring down rain and thundering to match how he feels.

Seungkwan watches the park, the playground with the parents and their kids and the trees swaying, and Vernon watches Seungkwan. He’d assume that such bright light would draw out his sunken features and accentuate his pale skin, maybe make him look worse, but he finds himself thinking that he looks healthier, happier. Like this, his eyes are closer to caramel than flat black, and it’s beautiful.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> you can also find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/kwantent)


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